Why using Google Cloud Drive Rest API file.list can not get all the files?

Question

I am using the following CURL command to retrieve all my google drive files, however, it only list a very limited part of the whole bunch of files. Why?

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ya29.hereshouldbethemaskedaccesstokenvalue" https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files

result

{
"kind": "drive#fileList",
"incompleteSearch": false,
"files": [
{
"kind": "drive#file",
id": "2fileidxxxxxxxx",
"name": "testnum",
"mimeType": "application/vnd.google-apps.folder"
},
{
"kind": "drive#file",
"id": "1fileidxxxxxxx",
"name": "test2.txt",
...
}

token scope includes https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.appdata

Using the Android SDK also facing the same issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Results from files.list are paginated -- your response should include a "nextPageToken" field, and you'll have to make another call for the next page of results. See documentation here about the files list call. You may want to use one of the client libraries to make this call (see the examples at the bottom of the page)

Answer 2

I have the same problem when try to get list of files in Google Drive folder. This folder has more than 5000 files, but API return only two of them. The problem is -- when files in folder shared with anyone with a link, in fact it isn't shared with you until you open it. Owner of this folder must specify you as viewer.